A guide to traditional Cuban cuisine

©eliazar/Flickr

If you ever have a chance to visit Cuba do not hesitate to try as  many traditional Cuban meals offered by the Cuban cuisine as possible.We hope that this article about Cuban dishes will help you to make the right choices.

Being influenced mostly by Spanish and African culture, Cuban cuisine combines these nations’ cuisine to produce  tasty, flavor rich  and also unique, popular dishes. Cuban cuisine has little concern about timing and measuring  and what you should know about the Cuban food is that  its food is  tasty  rather than spicy. Cuban cousin relies on fresh root vegetables and fruits and also on spices such as: garlic, cumin, oregano, bay laurel leaves. Basic ingredients like rice, beans, onions, olive oil, pork, chicken, beef, and garlic have become a part of nearly every Cuban meal.

Cuban people prefer to use sofrito as their basis. The sofrito is an often used sauce which gives the food its flavor. It is made of ground pepper that is  quick-fried in olive oil, some green pepper, onion and a bit of garlic with a little oregano. All kinds of meatswould usually be  marinated in different kinds of  citrus juices, and then they would just roast it on a lower heat until the meat gets soft enough.

The typical Cuban breakfast

Café con leche con tostadas, ©Boca Dorada/ flickr

An authentic Cuban breakfast is served with tostada and café con leche.
The tostada is known as a portion of Cuban buttered and toasted bread. The café con leche is a combination of a very strong espresso café with warm milk. There is a special way to eat this breakfast. You can break the tostada into small pieces and dunk it into the café. Similarly to other nations Cuban people like to eat ham, egg and toast for breakfast as well.

What to eat for lunch in Cuba

Cuban Sandwitch, ©TheGirlsNY/flickr

Cuban people do not spend too much time to prepare their lunch. They often eat something cold. They would very often eat chicken empanados at this time of the day. These are similar to chicken sandwiches but with a special Cuban bread. Another kind of sandwich can be a media noche–midnight sandwich, consisting of a slice of pork, ham  and Swiss cheese topped with pickles and mustard on sweetened egg bread.

Dinner as the main meal in Cuba

© Sharona Gott/flickr

Because dinner is the main meal in the country, Cuban people prefer to eat heavy meals at the end of the day. Due to the fact that  Cubans are a meat eating people you can easily and often  find  meet in the main course as well.You would often see   chicken, pork, beef  or  fish for dinner, accompanied with black beans, white rice, mashed potatoes with grilled fresh vegetables, maybe some fresh fruit. Cubans prefer to eat salads with their dinner as well. Tomato salad,  onion and avocado salad are the most popular ones.

The main meal is  always followed by desserts… The main dessert in Cuba is ice cream. Cubans eat ice cream with chocolate or caramel sauce on the  top of it.  Other popular desserts are ice shaving in sweet syrup, caramel custard and custards made with fruit.

By combining the ingredients  of other countries cuisine  with the fresh vegetables and fruits Cubans managed to provide an interesting, delicious  as well as unique cuisine in the Caribbean area. Hope this short guide about the traditional Cuban cuisine helped you to learna  a little bit more about Cuban culture and people.